How Impressions Of Beauty Helps Turn HBCU Students Into Effective Influencers And Works With Brands

A quarter of gen Z wants to be an influencer, and 65% of the generation is in college. That’s where Impressions of Beauty intersects with gen Zers as they chart their course to social media prominence. Founded in 2013 by Ashlee Gomez, who previously held marketing positions at Revlon Professional, the marketing and events company specializes in historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), where roughly 340,000 students are being trained to become corporate, government, entrepreneurial and community leaders.

At the institutions, Impressions of Beauty sets up activations, cultivates ambassadors, initiates programs with clubs, hosts focus groups, distributes samples, mentors budding content creators, facilitates brand participation in rush, homecoming or other key collegiate festivities, and much more. For example, it teamed up with haircare and skincare brand Palmers on a salon pop-up tour that brought three hairstylists to 10 campuses, where they provided around 100 hairstyles. The tour generated 5,000-plus sampling impressions.

In its decade in business, Impressions of Beauty has worked with over 100,000 students and 30 brands, including Carol’s Daughter, The Honey Pot Company, Bobbi Brown, Walmart, Amazon, Creme of Nature and Victoria’s Secret, looking to establish meaningful connections with college attendees, who collectively have nearly $600 billion in estimated spending power in the United States.

Beauty Independent spoke with Gomez about how her company serves college influencers and the results her clients achieve from engaging HBCU students.

Why is it important to focus on the multicultural student population in your influencer marketing business?

Initially it was because it was an underserved population, but the main thing is I felt like sampling efforts were this blanket approach that targeted the general market and not necessarily multicultural women of color or people of color. I wanted to start something that not only would introduce the students to brands that were created with them in mind, but also to give companies a unique opportunity to speak specifically to this audience.

You have formed four collectives college students can join involving brand ambassadors, influencers, career-oriented emHERging leaders and campus queens. Could you walk us through them?

With the core collectives, the idea behind those is the programming side of the business that really allows us to work with our brand partners and get on campus. Then, there’s this other half of it genuinely serving this audience. I don’t want to just give them lip gloss and shampoo and say, “Have a great semester.”

So, how do we actually pour into the audience side of our business? We always had a brand ambassador program. We’ve had an influencer program. Those were two spaces that were needed, not only for our brand partners, but to really build a community. Later in our journey, we started the emHERging leaders, which we’re still really getting off the ground. 

The brand ambassador program is for girls who are into event planning, girls who really like marketing, who love beauty and are passionate about bringing amazing experiences to their campus. It is an opportunity for them to work with us when we come to their campus, be a part of a bigger community and gain some valuable work experience.

I think that the influencer collective is a really cool and valuable program for participants because it helps to not only develop the influencers, but it’s for people who are interested in becoming an influencer or people who already know what they’re doing and they’re looking to grow. 

The the last program is the campus queen collective, which is our newest program. We understand that there’s a strong need for support, and HBCU campus queens are a really big part of the culture. They’re also an amazing group of women that have great influence on the campus, and so work with them to get them things that they need to be successful throughout their reign.

Could you discuss how you work with major beauty brands? What’s been the impact for students?

It was really hard at one point to get partnerships with companies if you were just an individual who wasn’t represented by an agency or you didn’t have some type of special inroad or connection. We helped to facilitate that relationship with the students and the brands. 

I can think of several different people who have come through or been a part of Impressions of Beauty at some point. They might have started with 4,000 followers, and now they’re in the hundreds of thousands of followers. Of course, we can’t take full credit for all of that because a lot of that is due to work ethic and their content strategy, but to see that and have people be a part of Impressions of Beauty and grow in that way is so rewarding. 

When companies have partnerships that they’re looking for us to help fulfill, we really go full force at it. It’s definitely an area of the business that is really valuable to our audience. 

How are students growing their followers based on your programming? 

We are helping them to understand how to be an influencer, how to position yourself, what to post, when to post, how to post, but, more importantly, getting them brand partnerships that they may not have otherwise been able to get. In turn, I think it pushes them to post more, to take it seriously. The brand partnership also gives them credibility.

It’s three parts. It’s facilitating this relationship with this well-known company. It’s the credibility you have from that. Then, it’s pushing the [consistency]. So, you’re getting in this rhythm of having brand partnerships and posting, and it’s this snowball effect. 

What platforms are college influencers using? Are they getting trained on how to use them?

TikTok and Instagram primarily. Those are the key players. We do provide some training on the platforms. A lot of times these young ladies are very well aware of the platforms and how they work, but it’s teaching them some tools or tricks that they may or may not have known and how to understand analytics.

But it’s more about how to position themselves on those platforms and how to brand themselves in a way that is attractive for companies so they want to work with you. 

How are students mentored?

We typically have group coaching programming for them. We have an open-door policy if anybody wants to dive deeper on a topic, if they’re struggling or want us to review something like look at their feed or if they’re looking to rebrand and want feedback. 

What brands are students interested in and what brands are interested in getting involved with college influencers? 

We see a lot of students working with companies like Amazon, Fashion Nova or PrettyLittleThing. Lots of the haircare brands are looking to use user-generated content.

How are students expected to promote products? Are they getting paid for their work? 

Companies have different options around how they want to partner. This is not just Impressions of Beauty or our clients, but in general. You’ve got your nano-influencers who are really small, and they’re just looking for training, looking to build credibility and experience. They may accept what we call gifting and not require payment, but, as you start to get into your micro-influencers and anything above that, they’re probably going to expect payment. 

It depends on the company’s strategy. We see everything from people being paid to not being paid to being paid well. It depends on their following, level of experience and level of influence.

What’s been the response from the brands who work with these students? 

We have very loyal clients, and they see value in working with this audience. A lot of them specifically target this demographic [because] that’s what their brand focuses on. It’s a no-brainer for them to be a part of these programs and be amongst the conversation when we’re going to these campuses. They love working with us and with the students.

A lot of our clients that have been with us for years. They see a significantly greater market share than companies that don’t do this right or don’t participate in these types of programs or speak to this demographic. They also understand the importance of being consistent and authentic. You’re not just showing up once every two years to say that you do college marketing or that you’re invested in the HBCU community, they’re consistently doing these programs. That’s another reason why they really do see value and get the return on investment.